AJW

Thanks for all your suggestions guys. It's funny but I already have some brown tubing which I might try to use. I have now built an interior for the station, you can see the progress in this thread.

You absolutely correct! I was the Fire Brigade set 10197 that inspired me.

Thank you for the kind words guys. @Greg3 - I am particularly pleased with the ticket office window. When I began the build I thought I might have to do it with a sticker but I finally figured out a way to construct it using cheese slopes. @Ralph - I have seen your Brickston Borough project and it's fab! If you ever get around to displaying it (or something similar), I'd love to lend you my Underground station to slot in somewhere. Are you a member of the Brickish Association? @Fugazi - Yes I had to use glue in the end to secure the cheese slopes above the arches. I never did find a satisfactory way to attach them the official way. As for the upper storey, that would have originally been full of machinery for the lift. @Sandy - Yup, moustaches were all the rage in 1910. I've got a photo of my great-grandfather wearing a huge one! @Whittleberry - Dark red was also my first choice, but you a correct about the arches not available in that colour, how annoying! @Sieg7ri4d - I did this vintage Underground train a while back, you may spot some familiar faces:

My first attempt at building a Lego London Underground station in minifig scale. Inspired by stations designed by Leslie Green and opened on the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern lines around 1906 - 1907. This is the way the station would have looked in 1910, when the 'UndergrounD' signage began appearing on stations. Entrance and ticket window: Lift attendant: Exit: More photos in the Flickr set.

Here's a diagram of my current 12 volt layout: More photos in my Flickr set

You're right, it works! Cool, thanks for that.

I've never figured out how to use the brick separator to get tiles off a board. It's great with bricks and plates though. Perhaps I didn't read the instruction manual properly

Have you, like me, been struggling to get those pesky tiles off your baseboards when dismantling the sidewalks of your CC sets? I have found that a hard guitar plectrum is just the thing. Being made of a similar material, it does not scratch the bricks and makes it super easy to get them off the board. Have fun!

Sounds very interesting, although my brain isn't powerful enough to construct an image of it. Please can you post a picture? And to clear up any uncertainty, this is My Own Creation

The inside is horribly ugly and I wouldn't want to expose anybody to it yet. But you are pretty close, at the moment I am using these parts to hold the cheese slopes: and Hmm, glue does sound quite tempting. Am I a bad person for thinking that?

Maybe this should go in the Train Tech forum. Although this is more Townish than Trainish isn't it? Anyway, I'm building a replica of a London Underground station as designed by Leslie Green and opened around 1907. But I need your help! See those cheese slopes above the windows (I think they might be called decorative keystones)? I can't figure out a way to make them sit flush with the top of the arch. I bet somebody around here knows how to do it! And an extra 10 points if you can tell me where the idea for the windows came from? The Flickr set

ENTERED Here is my entry for the Train Tech Building Contest. A London Tube train from 1890: Another photograph from the side. The City and South London Railway was the first deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction. When opened in 1890, it had six stations and ran for 3.2 miles in a pair of tunnels between the City of London and Stockwell, passing under the River Thames. The diameter of the tunnels restricted the size of the trains and the small carriages with their high-backed seating were nicknamed padded cells. Today, its tunnels and stations form part of the London Underground's Northern Line. This model is constructed on top of a grey era 12v motor. Now I just need to build a model of Victorian London to run it under....! Click here to see the real locomotive. Click here to see the "Padded Cell" carriage.

Thanks guys for you kind words and encouragement. I am currently working on a minifig scale grocery store to keep the population of AJW Town (must think of a better name) well fed and watered. It's taken me four years to get the layout to this stage so the project will be never ending.... Yes they do have significant value as collectors pieces not just as 'toys'. I have been buying and selling Lego for five years now so I like to think this collection has cost me a fraction of it's real value. My wife keeps on eyeing them suspiciously and asking "and how much are these worth?" As for the dust, I keep all my sets in a large cupboard. So they are stored in the dark which keeps the bricks the correct colour and significantly reduces the amount of dust that settles on them. I have to go over each one every couple of years and brush the dust off with a soft paint brush. Thanks for blogging my submissions Brickster, it's really rather flattering. I love the graphic you assembled for the post on Classic-Town.net, totally superb! Is there ever going to be a Classic-Train.net? Here's the design of the track. But it doesn't show the four signals which control access to the sidings and stop trains at the station: And here is the piece count:

I was born in 1972, so you would expect me to be just the right age to enjoy these beauties when they were originally released: Sadly not, I was given one of these as a birthday present just before the 12v range was released : Although I loved the 171 to bits I always dreamt of upgrading to the serious 12v sets. It turned out I had to wait almost 25 years and suffer the indignity of a dark age before I could start my 12v collection. And here it now is for your inspection and entertainment... Freight and maintenance trains: Passenger trains: I hope I have given them a good home! They seem to be happy running around my layout: The layout is still very much work in progress as you can see by the large expanse of green in the centre. But the trains come first so the shopping malls and car parks will have to wait: I had to create some custom pieces of track to achieve the layout I was after. I might post more about that later: More photos in my Flickr sets.

That green boxcar looks great to me Brickster, I suppose it could do with green sliding doors but they probably don't exist I really love the classic 12v fig guarding the gold, is he keeping it safe from marauding gangs of outlaws? That catalogue from 1980 must be the finest ever produced by Lego. I remember it like it was yesterday

You want me to depict this forlorn little locomotive being sliced up by maniacs wielding blow-torches? Phew, I'm not sure I can bring myself to do that.

I wasn't prepared for the outpouring of grief and protestations which followed me posting this image after the Brickster raised the subject of flat bed train wagons: However, that was only the beginning of the story... So the loco was hauled away and taken to some sidings next to an orchard: Luckily, the scrap metal dealers had hundreds of coal trucks to cut up first, so they forgot about poor old 7727. And time passed: One pleasant sunny day, Mr Richman and his wife are out for a stroll and stumble across the sidings: Now Mr Richman has always wanted an old steam engine, so he persuades his wife to let him buy it: He gives the owner of the sidings 30 golden quid. The locomotive is his! To be continued..... More photos in my Flickr set

Thanks Brickster, you've finally inspired me to record this sad scene. Vintage steam locomotive 7727 has reached the end of it's working life and is hauled away to the scrapyard... And you should see what is in the yellow van, it's actually a rolling workshop. From left to right: tool rack, oil drum with hand pump, drill, vice attached to workbench, and finally a workman having a nice cup of tea! More photos in my Flickr set.

Isn't it funny how great minds think alike! I've been converting the same loco for my 12 volt layout. I have to agree with you guys, it's a lovely little model. I even had a go at adding some detail to the driving cab, but sadly there wasn't enough natural light to let me take photos of the inside. I decided to make the roof line flush with with windows to give it a slightly sleeker appearance. Apart from that and the grey ladders on the sides, it is exactly as the original instructions. So who fancies building a blue, green or yellow version?

Hi Freddie, thanks for returning to this thread to elaborate. I did try the ball joint pieces as you suggested, but I found that the pivot was too far from the centre of the loco and thus the wheels would not follow the track correctly. You certainly can control the speed remotely. All you need is one of these, and quite a lot of these. And four or five of these are always nice to have. And these are really cool too.

This is great. I love seeing the fusion of classic sets from the 80s with brand new technology. I don't know anything about power functions, can you start/stop and control the speed of the train remotely?

What pieces are you thinking of when you say trailer hinges?

Hello again! Here is my second attempt at building a locomotive which looks like an official set from the 1980s and will fit into my 12v layout. This locomotive was inspired by set 162 which was released in 1977: and here it is: I guess it was probably built by the same company who manufactured the 7760 shunting loco! I tried adding an exhaust pipe rising from the top of the engine housing, but I was never happy with the look. I also tried red lamps at each corner but it looked terrible! It took me 3 attempts to get the frame and bogies to work correctly. In my first version the buffers and couplers were attached to the frame but it could not negotiate a set of points successfully. This is the final version which I am very happy with: And this is what is going on under the body. Yes, the frame and body is attached to the bogies with only four studs. But it's very sturdy: One final picture of it hauling a maintenance train:

Thanks for your compliments! I will take some photos of my collection the next time I have a chance to get the layout setup (which doesn't happen as often as I'd like ) In the meantime I am working on a 12v grey era version of this set: As soon as the doors arrive and the model is complete I will take some photos and post them here. And as for the conducting rails! All my straight pieces are used in my layout. Lets just say that my display track is unpowered and this train was shunted into place by a diesel loco, perhaps 7760?

Hello fellow train fans. Recently I finished collecting all the grey era 12v trains and wagons I wanted. How can I add more authentic Lego trains to my collection I thought? So I looked back through the early catalogues and found these two sets... And I wondered what these sets would have looked like if they had been released in 1982. Perhaps like this? Now I have another passenger train to run alongside my 7740! Please excuse the poor photography and the distracting background